Modern and Post-modern Designers

Modernism

Modern Art or Modernism is the loose term given to the succession of styles and movements in art and architecture which dominated Western culture from 19th Century up until the 1960’s. Movements associated with Modern art include Impressionism, Cubism, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Futurism, Pop Art and Op Art.

Postmodernism

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as Intermedia, Installation art, Conceptual Art and Multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.

Robert 

Brownjohn

Robert Brownjohn was an American graphic designer best known for his film title sequences, especially From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. In 1944, at age 19, Robert was accepted into the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he became a protégé of founder László Moholy-Nagy. Upon graduation, he worked as an architectural planner and then taught at the Institute of Design. After five years, he moved to New York to pursue a career in graphic design and in 1957, he founded Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar (BCG) with fellow designers Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, who designed mainly for print, producing commercial projects as well as typographic experiments for clients as large as Pepsi-Cola. In 1959, BCG came to an end as Robert moved to the UK, where he worked at advertising agency J. Walter Thompson until 1962, when he moved over to McCann Erickson. It was at this point that his career began to shift toward moving images and in 1963, the producers of the James Bond films approached him to design the title sequence for the second Bond film, From Russia with Love. He also later designed the titles and promotional posters for Goldfinger. Both titles used the technique of projecting moving footage onto the bodies of models and filming the results, which is an idea gleaned from the Bauhaus and was used by László Maholy-Nagy in his early 1920s constructivist films.

He went on to design the cover for the 1969 Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed as well as two other title sequences: Where the Spies Are and The Night of the Generals.

Paul Rand

Paul Rand was an American art director and graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including IBM, UPS, Enron, Morningstar, Inc. He was one of the first American commercial artists to embrace and practice the Swiss Style of graphic design.

Ikko Tanaka

Born in Nara, Japan in 1930, Ikko Tanaka created a style of graphic design that fused modernism principles and aesthetics with the Japanese tradition. As a child he studied art and as a young adult he was involved in modern drama and theatrical study groups. In 1963 he formed Tanaka Design Studio where he worked for corporations such as Mazda, Hanae Mori, Issey Miyake and the International Garden and Greenery Exhibition. 

       

Stephan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister (born August 6, 1962) is a New York-based graphic designer and typographer. Sagmeister co-founded a design firm called Sagmeister & Walsh Inc. with Jessica Walsh in New York City. He has designed album covers for Lou Reed, OK Go, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Aerosmith and Pat Metheny.

Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper is a postmodern paradox. He is an iconclast who loves what he transgresses, whether the tenets of modernist typographyt, the idea of apple-pis America or even the belief in an all-loving, all-powerful God. Most famously known for his title sequences, such as, Se7en and Spiderman.